Estimating near-roadway air pollution from multi-frequency noise measurements.

Air pollution is a major environmental problem and its monitoring is essential for regulatory purposes, policy making, and protecting public health. However, dense networks of air quality monitoring equipment are prohibitively expensive due to equipment costs, labor requirements, and infrastructure needs. As a result, alternative lower-cost methods that reliably determine air quality levels near potent pollution sources such as freeways are desirable.

Understanding Quasi-Static and Dynamic Characteristics of Organic Ferroelectric Field Effect Transistors.

Leveraging poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) [(PVDF-TrFE)] as the dielectric, we fabricated organic ferroelectric field-effect transistors (OFe-FETs). These devices demonstrate quasi-static transfer characteristics that include a hysteresis window alongside transient phenomena that bear resemblance to synaptic plasticity-encapsulating excitatory postsynaptic current (EPSC) as well as both short-term and long-term potentiation (STP/LTP). We also explore and elucidate other aspects such as the subthreshold swing and the hysteresis window under dynamic state by varying the pace of voltage sweeps.

Disparities in greenspace associated with sleep duration among adolescent children in Southern California.

Unlabelled: More than half of adolescent children do not get the recommended 8 hours of sleep necessary for optimal growth and development. In adults, several studies have evaluated effects of urban stressors including lack of greenspace, air pollution, noise, nighttime light, and psychosocial stress on sleep duration. Little is known about these effects in adolescents, however, it is known that these exposures vary by socioeconomic status (SES).

Global future population exposure to heatwaves.

The increasing exposure to extreme heatwaves in urban areas from both climate change and the urban heat island (UHI) effect poses multiple threats and challenges to human society. Despite a growing number of studies focusing on extreme exposure, research advances are still limited in some aspects such as oversimplification of human exposure to heatwaves and neglect of perceived temperature as well as actual body comfort, resulting in unreliable and unrealistic estimates of future results. In addition, little research has performed comprehensive and fine-resolution global analyses in future scenarios.

Estimating traffic noise over a large urban area: An evaluation of methods.

Unlike air pollution, traffic-related noise remains unregulated and has been under-studied despite evidence of its deleterious health impacts. To characterize population exposure to traffic noise, both acoustic-based numerical models and data-driven statistical approaches can generate estimates over large urban areas. The aim of this work is to formally compare the performances of the most common traffic noise models by evaluating their estimates for different categories of roads and validating them against a unique dataset of measured noise in Long Beach, California.

Exposure models for particulate matter elemental concentrations in Southern California.

Due to a scarcity of routine monitoring of speciated particulate matter (PM), there has been limited capability to develop exposure models that robustly estimate component-specific concentrations. This paper presents the largest such study conducted in a single urban area. Using samples that were collected at 220 locations over two seasons, quasi-ultrafine (PM), accumulation mode fine (PM), and coarse (PM) particulate matter concentrations were used to develop spatiotemporal regression, machine learning models that enabled predictions of 24 elemental components in eight Southern California communities.

A comparative mapping of plant species diversity using ensemble learning algorithms combined with high accuracy surface modeling.

Plant species diversity (PSD) has always been an essential component of biodiversity and plays an important role in ecosystem functions and services. However, it is still a huge challenge to simulate the spatial distribution of PSD due to the difficulties of data acquisition and unsatisfactory performance of predicting algorithms over large areas. A surge in the number of remote sensing imagery, along with the great success of machine learning, opens new opportunities for the mapping of PSD.

PPARα at the crossroad of metabolic-immune regulation in cancer.

Rewiring metabolism to sustain cell growth, division, and survival is the most prominent feature of cancer cells. In particular, dysregulated lipid metabolism in cancer has received accumulating interest, since lipid molecules serve as cell membrane structure components, secondary signaling messengers, and energy sources. Given the critical role of immune cells in host defense against cancer, recent studies have revealed that immune cells compete for nutrients with cancer cells in the tumor microenvironment and accordingly develop adaptive metabolic strategies for survival at the expense of compromised immune functions.

and evaluation of tumor-derived exosome-induced dendritic cell dysfunction in mouse.

Exosomes that contain various signaling molecules, such as proteins, nucleotides, metabolites, and lipids, are important for intercellular communication. Dendritic cells (DC) are central regulators of anti-tumor immunity but can be suppressed by tumor-derived exosomes (TDEs) in the tumor microenvironment. Here, we describe a step-by-step protocol for TDE isolation and evaluation of TDEs on DCs both and with high repeatability.

PPARα Inhibition Overcomes Tumor-Derived Exosomal Lipid-Induced Dendritic Cell Dysfunction.

Dendritic cells (DCs) orchestrate the initiation, programming, and regulation of anti-tumor immune responses. Emerging evidence indicates that the tumor microenvironment (TME) induces immune dysfunctional tumor-infiltrating DCs (TIDCs), characterized with both increased intracellular lipid content and mitochondrial respiration. The underlying mechanism, however, remains largely unclear.

Association of the Built Environment With Childhood Psychosocial Stress.

Importance: Emerging research suggests that factors associated with the built environment, including artificial light, air pollution, and noise, may adversely affect children's mental health, while living near green space may reduce stress. Little is known about the combined roles of these factors on children's stress.

Objective: To investigate associations between components of the built environment with personal and home characteristics in a large cohort of children who were assessed for perceived stress.

Predicting Fine Spatial Scale Traffic Noise Using Mobile Measurements and Machine Learning.

Environmental noise has been associated with a variety of health endpoints including cardiovascular disease, sleep disturbance, depression, and psychosocial stress. Most population noise exposure comes from vehicular traffic, which produces fine-scale spatial variability that is difficult to characterize using traditional fixed-site measurement techniques. To address this challenge, we collected A-weighted, equivalent noise (LAeq in decibels, dB data on hour-long foot journeys around 16 locations throughout Long Beach, California and trained four machine learning models, linear regression, random forest, extreme gradient boosting, and a neural network, to predict noise with 20 m resolution.

Fabrication and evaluation of flexible electrowetting display with support pillars.

With the development of portable and wearable devices, flexible displays have attracted extensive interest and have become increasingly important in our daily life. In this study, a flexible electrowetting display (FEWD) was proposed and fabricated. To prevent a short circuit between the top and bottom electrodes, various types of support pillars were fabricated on the top substrates through a photolithography technique.

Naringenin Enhances the Antitumor Effect of Therapeutic Vaccines by Promoting Antigen Cross-Presentation.

Dendritic cells (DCs) can internalize and cross-present exogenous Ags to CD8 T cells for pathogen or tumor cell elimination. Recently, growing evidences suggest the possible immunoregulatory role of flavonoids through modulating the Ag presentation of DCs. In this study, we report that naringenin, a grapefruit-derived flavonoid, possesses the ability to increase the Ag cross-presentation in both murine DC line DC2.

Estimating the effect of urbanization on extreme climate events in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, China.

Quantifying the impact of urbanization on extreme climate events is significant for ecosystem responses, flood control, and urban planners. This study aimed to examine the urbanization effects on a suite of 36 extreme temperature and precipitation indices for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region by classifying the climate observations into three different urbanization levels. A total of 176 meteorological stations were used to identify large cities, small and medium-size cities and rural environments by applying K-means cluster analysis combined with spatial land use, nighttime light remote sensing, socio-economic data and Google Earth.

Naringenin Ameliorates Radiation-Induced Lung Injury by Lowering IL-1 Level.

Radiation-induced lung injury (RILI) is the main complication of radiotherapy for thoracic malignancies. Since naringenin, a potent immune-modulator, has been found to relieve bleomycin-induced lung fibrosis by restoring the balance of disordered cytokines, we sought to determine whether naringenin would mitigate RILI and to investigate the underlying mechanism. Animals received fractionated irradiation in the thoracic area to induce RILI.

Naringenin prevents TGF-β1 secretion from breast cancer and suppresses pulmonary metastasis by inhibiting PKC activation.

Background: Targeting the TGF-β1 pathway for breast cancer metastasis therapy has become an attractive strategy. We have previously demonstrated that naringenin significantly reduced TGF-β1 levels in bleomycin-induced lung fibrosis and effectively prevented pulmonary metastases of tumors. This raised the question of whether naringenin can block TGF-β1 secretion from breast cancer cells and inhibit their pulmonary metastasis.